Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

Stay Sexy ~ Stay Healthy

Time for a confession #MFRWAuthor #BabyBoomers

by

It’s confession time.

An author friend posted the question why do you write? on one of our author loops. As I pondered how to answer, I realized it’s so embedded in our own personal story that I couldn’t give a short answer.

Our readers know we are baby boomers. If they’re anywhere close to our age, they also know that midlife can bring a host of challenges in the bedroom. For us, that was complicated by health issues: A heart attack (in his forties!) for him, abdominal repair issues for me. Add onto that the fact I have three stepchildren. From the moment we married until our own son turned 20, I always had at least one teenager in the house. Time for sex? Interest in it? Not so much, for longer than I’d like to confess.

But neither of us was willing to give up. Our parents, it turns out, lived very long lives. Who, at midlife, wants to look forward to three or four more decades with no sex? We started looking for resources and found some great ones. We started watching videos – yes, Those Kinds of videos, in the bedroom, as a prelude to our own activities.

After a while we started saying things like “I’d like that story better if…” and “what would really turn me on is if she…”  As you might guess, we started setting down stories that better met our needs. Gradually we didn’t use the videos so much – we read out loud from our own material.

So why do we write? We want to save the world from boring sex.

Feel free to take a peek at our Swinging Lifestyle stories and our Polyamory stories and let us know if we’re succeeding!

The first 2000 steps #MFRWAuthor #Health #Boomers #Motivation

by

“Watch that first step, it’s a doozy!” Sometimes just taking that first step towards a more healthy lifestyle is a giant undertaking. But here’s the thing – those steps have to happen over and over, just like Groundhog Day, which popularized but probably did not originate the “doozy” phrase.

Now that I’ve discovered 8000 steps a day is the threshold that makes a discernible difference in my energy level and mental alertness, the challenge is how to fit them in.

I’m an early riser, usually up without an alarm between five and six a.m. I wake with a mental list of the tasks I hope to polish off in the two hours before my husband gets up. I usually wake feeling energetic and motivated, not wanting the rest of my day to get cluttered up with what I leave undone in the early morning.

BUT I’m starting to learn that if I don’t take advantage of the cool morning hours to make a significant dent in my daily 8000 steps, I don’t reach that goal. Polishing off 2000 steps before breakfast seems to be the minimum required to get to 8000 by the end of the day.

Now my marching orders become a little more daunting: I have to fight my urge to “get things done” and decide that staying fit, healthy, energetic and alert outranks whatever I might accomplish short term. It matters more. I have to give up maybe twenty minutes worth of tasks (and feelings of accomplishment) and convince myself that the mood elevation, long term benefits, and yes, feeling of accomplishment from reaching my steps goal is worth it. Every morning. Over and over.

How to motivate myself to keep doing it? I’ve got lots of tactics and will share more about them down the road. Right now, a picture might be worth a thousand words (and it sure helps with 2000 steps!)

We spend much of the winter in southern Arizona. Almost every morning, the Arizona sky puts a smile on my face as I’m walking. That’s a draw to at least set foot out the door – and as I’m sure you know, taking that first step is all important, whether or not it’s a doozy.

So far, so good!

Every step counts… #health #boomers #MFRWAuthor

by

Are you interested in your health? How much time do you spend thinking about it on a daily basis?

More important, how much time do you invest in doing something about it on a daily basis?

When I was in my twenties, I probably didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, though through a quirk of fate (friends in college in the 60s) I’d already developed a daily exercise program.

We got excited about the RCAF routine and got together in the dorm halls (not co-ed, in those days 😊) most evenings to run through the 10 minute routine. It stuck with me. I liked what it did for my body – probably more motivated by what I wanted to look like than health concerns in those days!

But as I’ve grown older (Baby Boomer, here), my health concerns and activities have increased. Though each of my parents lived a very long time (95 and 101), both developed forms of dementia late in life: My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and needed care for her symptoms for her last five years, during most of which time she didn’t know who I was (or her husband, either). My dad’s was more classic age-related dementia, and he continued to know me (the “blue-eyed” daughter), remembered raunchy jokes from his youth, and kept his assisted living staff entertained and engaged by laughing with them often. If I have a choice, I’d prefer his trajectory.

Fast forward to today: Each time a new link surfaces with information about preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia, I’m all over it in a flash. Whatever my genes have in store for me down the road, it’s clear a great deal is within my control. At the very least, if this is my future, I can delay onset and significantly decrease symptoms through how I live on a daily basis. And even if my genes aren’t poised to take me there, I’ll experience vastly greater quality of life through my remaining years.

So I’m going to take up blogging about it again. If you’re interested in what I’ve had to say about it in the past, you can explore the Stay Sexy column we published in 2013 and 2014.

My new series of posts will have the somewhat broader focus of overall health, though of course you can count on us to never ignore sex 😊. I’ll share tips, new research, what has worked for both halves of Adriana Kraft, what hasn’t, and opportunities for guests who have a similar focus. Drop us a line (use the contact button in the r.h. sidebar) and tell us what you’d like to blog about as our guest.

For today, I’m sticking to counting steps. FitBit has sold millions of step counters with its campaign about the benefits of walking 10,000 steps a day. Is the hype true? The answer, in general, is yes. A 2017 HuffPo article supports the benefits, with some caveats that are worth noting: slow steps don’t have the same benefit as a faster pace, and there’s no magic threshold at 10,000. More is simply better.

After researching step-counters, I invested in a FitBit Charge 2 (Mr. Kraft gave it to me last Christmas, actually). I love it. I always know where I am relative to my goals. What I especially appreciate is being reminded to move – at least 250 steps – every hour. I spend much of my day sitting at the computer (imagine that!). Not moving, it turns out, can be lethal.

What’s more, I’ve discovered that the bottom threshold, for me, happens at about 8,000 steps. If I get less than that in a day, I feel more sluggish, less energized, and less alert the next day (and Mr. Kraft is far more likely to beat me at WordStreak). I’m on much more of an even keel if I’ve reached at least that much, though my goal continues to be more. Every step counts.

What works for you? We’d love to hear from you, in comments below or via our email contact on the sidebar.

Stay Sexy ~ Feed your Fantasies!

by

Lacy-lips-smallDo you ever fantasize about having sex with multiple partners? Two hot guys, maybe, or maybe a sexy guy and a hot woman? Or swapping with another couple and enjoying a foursome? If so, read on!

 

 

The-Ultimate-Guide-to-Sex-Over-Fifty-200x300I’m devouring Joan Price’s latest book, The Ultimate Guide to Sex Over Fifty, and hope to post a review in another week or two. Meantime I ran across the following marvelous quote from writer/activist Carol Queen in its pages:

“Sex with many people is actually the most functional form of sex education for many in our culture. In a society that doesn’t value or take seriously the responsibility to teach about pleasure, many of us still derive our most profound understandings about our own sexuality on the hoof, in the street, on the prowl.”

The first thing that struck me as I read those words was that it’s what so many swingers tell us about the impact of swinging on their sex lives with each other. You might think that people who turn to swinging are sexually savvy and experienced already, and many are, but even so, in addition to the thrill of multiple partners, many are surprised that they discover nuances about their own sexuality and each other’s they weren’t aware of. Even more, they learn new activities, toys, and positions they haven’t thought to try.

We’ve spoken with swingers ranging from their thirties to their eighties. Their reasons for getting involved with the lifestyle vary, but almost universally, they report reaping so much more benefit than they ever anticipated, and they’re grateful (especially as they age) for the extra boost to their libidos and their enjoyment.

We began writing our Swinging Games series for similar reasons. In it, we follow a mid-life empty-nest baby-boomer couple who reach the decision to check out the swing lifestyle because the wife thinks she might be bisexual, but doesn’t want to leave her husband out of her sexual exploration. Thirteen installments later, they are still going strong, and you can check out the series at this LINK to see if it can add to your fantasies.

Meanwhile Stay Sexy, and have fun!

If You’re Lucky…

by

The-Ultimate-Guide-to-Sex-Over-Fifty-200x300“If you’re lucky, the question of sex for seniors will be relevant to your life, sooner or later.” This is my favorite line from Charlie Glickman’s review of Joan Price’s brand new book, The Ultimate Guide to Sex Over Fifty.

Um, yes. Hubs and I are definitely over fifty, and we do consider ourselves extremely lucky. We write spicy romantic suspense and erotic romance together because we love it, we want to stay sexually active as we grow older (and we hope to grow lots older), and we’d like to entice others to do the same.

So we’re thrilled to see this new book out from Joan Price, whom we’ve been following for a few years, and eager to have it in our hands. It’s available for pre-order now at Amazon and will be released January 13.

While you’re waiting for it, Charlie Glickman’s review is definitely worth a read. Oh, you’re not nearly fifty yet, so this doesn’t apply to you? Here’s what he has to say about that: “If you spend the first fifty years of your life ignoring the fact that older folks have sex, or worse, if you make it into a joke or a target of mockery, you’re setting yourself up for a really rough time when you get to that age.”

Here’s to a long life and happiness, all the way around!

Stay Sexy ~ The Best Little….

by

Lacy-lips-mediumOnce it was the best little whorehouse in Texas—but now it’s in Nye County, Nevada, where we live, and it’s called the Chicken Ranch. So when friends invited us to Octoberfest at the Chicken Ranch, we decided we shouldn’t pass it up.

Loved it! Like no party I’d ever been to. Football was the theme, and guests were encouraged to wear team jerseys, so of course I hauled out my 2010 Championship T-shirt for the Green Bay Packers. Sad to say, not one of the ladies was a Packer fan – Steelers, Cowboys, Raiders, Broncos, even Seahawks. And I’ll have to admit their jerseys looked a little different than mine…

Drinks, finger foods, like any other cocktail party, with a little something extra. There was a “football” game where one player, blindfolded, had to carry a nerf football through the opposing team and endure a variety of tackles in order to reach the goal line. I won – and so did everyone who played, and I don’t think anyone minded the up close and personal tackles.

My favorite was the musical chairs lapdance. I’ll confess a lapdance has been on my bucket list for a while, so now I can check that off, very happily. Twelve of us, all genders, sat on chairs in a circle, and the ladies danced for us, then moved on to the next guest when someone yelled “switch.” Definitely entertaining.

Both of us also enjoyed a chance to talk with some of the ladies who work there. They’re normal people, making a good living. Some are saving up for hopes and dreams such as graduate school or starting a business. All are glad to be doing work they love in an environment that’s friendly, fully legal, and above all, safe.

Dare PartyI think that’s part of what made this such a fun, special event: a chance to be engaged in risqué, sexy behaviors with a group of like-minded adults, in a safe and legal setting where consent is at the top of the list and is honored.

Just like in the Dolly Parton movie, the brothels in Pahrump pride themselves in giving back to the community. They are often major donors to local charities, and they frequently host events open to the public, like Octoberfest. Next? A Halloween party at Sherri’s Ranch. I have my costume all planned.